Here and gone.

I've neglected my infant blog for the last couple of weeks, due to a perfect storm of complicating factors. I was hired for a short-term project, researching and writing bios for a forthcoming poetry anthology. I also got hit with some weird virus that has taken me out of commission for almost a week. (Not a computer virus, though, thank goodness.) And I had so many topics (and suggestions for topics) to write on that I never could settle on one to "git 'er done." (Thanks to Sheena, my primary source!)


I'm taking off tomorrow for Chicago, to read at Columbia College's Creative Nonfiction Week celebration. One of my essays, "Blood," was excerpted in the current issue of South Loop Review: Creative Nonfiction + Art. My fellow UMN alum and good friend Priscilla Kinter also has work in the issue, and will also be reading. (One of the topics I had considered putting up here was the relative merit of bringing my daughters to the reading; on the one hand, the essay is, in large part, about them, and it would also be nice for them to see Mom reading for an audience. On the other, they're 7, the reading and Q & A is two and a half hours long, and I'm bound to be stressed out about whether they're behaving or not. So the other hand won.)


I'll try to post from the road, but meanwhile, I'd like to get some thoughts on the following article from NYT: Picture Books No Longer a Staple for Children. What do you think, especially you parents? Are we pushing our kids to chapter books too soon, or is this a "manufactured crisis"? Do you think the cost of picture books (upward of $20) is a factor?